


Hourglass of Sand

by Leonawriter



Category: Pocket Monsters: Ruby & Sapphire & Emerald | Pokemon Ruby Sapphire Emerald Versions
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-23
Updated: 2015-10-22
Packaged: 2018-04-27 16:40:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5056060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leonawriter/pseuds/Leonawriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a version of events where Groudon would not be calmed, the Hoenn region is turned into a desert, with those who do not flee to safer lands surviving as much as they can in a suddenly inhospitable home. Yet according to Dialga, this state of affairs is an aberration on the face of time, and a solution is sought for. Five years into the past, twenty-six year old May opens the eyes of her twenty-one year old self.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hourglass of Sand

The last things she really remembered from the original timeline were, even so, fragmented. 

Maxie's face, unusually open without the sand masks that had become the norm so that they could breathe, or the goggles so that they could see without getting blinded by either the heat or the constant dust and sand storms. May had kept and was still using the ones that Brendan had given her, even now. The smile on his face was forced, sad, red eyes seeing things far more clearly than he had while things had still been salvageable.

It could have been easy to hate. Many people did, looking for someone to pin the blame on. May didn't. She didn't have the heart.

She remembered Brendan - harsh words, anger, distrust. Trying to find a middle ground and get them all to work together.

Steven, who had staked everything on her success, and yet even still, when he wasn't at fault, saw only his own failures. Inability to protect, to be the Champion the region deserved,  _needed_. He put across the persona of someone in full command, who knew what they were doing, but May had seen him far too often in private, when he thought no one was looking. Drawn and weary and close, so close, to being without hope just like the rest of them, with only his steely determination keeping him going.

A dark haired girl - around her own age, as far as she could tell - and a man, somewhat older, who stayed apart from any main groups if given a choice, and who always dressed in greys and blacks, which turned to sand-painted browns and yellows before long. Both had eyes that pierced through, as though they had been through Hell and come back out the other side. 

Sometimes, May wondered if that had been more than mere fanciful thinking, when she heard the rumours.

Sometimes, she thought that the same could be said for her own group, because had they not created their own Hell on Earth, and consigned themselves to live in it when they could have left long ago?

May remembered red eyes looking out from a blue face, with a body that towered over her head so far that the Temporal Pokemon had to bend down somewhat to look at her square on. The feeling of being  _judged_.

_There is an anomaly. The one who is there at the beginning of all things has known this for some time._

Pokemon might be their partners, their friends, their family. They might fight their trainers' battles. But when it came down to it, they were still powerful. Far more powerful than any human would ever be.

May had found herself being  _afraid_.

_A shatterpoint was altered. It was turned into an aberration. An illness in the fabric of time._

She felt judged. Measured. Found wanting. She - she must have caused this. Something she had not done, something she had, but wrongly. Thoughts that had circled in her head ever since -  _it_ \- had happened, constantly waiting for a time to strike and prey upon her need to stay somewhat confident, somewhat sane.

She wondered if this was what Steven felt like all the time.

_Something must be done. The longer this takes, the more the wound grows, and festers. The decay is already spreading._

_You can take nothing with you._

_Make this count._

...

The next thing she knew, it was dark. Dark in the 'who turned out the lights' way, as opposed to the 'it's night time, why aren't you asleep' way.

The floor was moving underneath her - was the base being moved again, and they'd hauled her into the nearest truck before she'd been woken up? It wasn't the first time something like that had happened.

It was also warm. Warm, but not  _hot_. 

Hot as she knew it was the dry kind of heat that sapped the strength out of you and dried up your sweat so that it stuck to you. The kind of heat that burned, and stole your breath. Compared to that, this kind of weather was relatively  _cool_.

Her back pocket began to beep, and she was fishing out her old PokeNav with the ease of practiced movement, even though its location was somewhat odd. So were her clothes in general, really - close-fitting, skin bared to the harsh sun, hair loose and hardly tied back at all. Where were her baggy clothes, better for the desert climate, secured to keep sand out of as many places as they could? Where were her bags, her backpacks, her goggles?

She opened up the 'Nav, now going through the motions, relying on having done this all before, distracted by how  _new_ the thing looked. 

_One new recorded message. Play?_

She gave it a few seconds only of her time before stopping the video. It didn't make sense. She'd seen this all before.  _Years_ before.

_Register device now, or later? Name. Gender. Age._

None of this made sense. New PokeNavs were hard to come by.  _Any_ new tech was. And she'd registered hers already, and it had never needed to go back to factory settings. Even so, she entered in her details.

_May Maple. Female. 26._

A screen popped up, asking her if she was sure that the details she had used were correct. She pushed 'Yes' - of course they were, she  _knew_ her name and age, and she knew that she'd put them in without any error.

The van stopped moving. Someone tapped hard on the outside of it twice, to let her know that it was safe to get out. She reached around to grab for her things, things that  _still weren't there_ , and started wondering not for the first itme if she'd been taken out of Hoenn entirely and taken back to Johto, or an entirely new region altogether.

That was, until she gave up the search and stepped outside.

Outside, where there were  _trees_ and  _grass_ and  _flowers_ and those  _houses_ \- that was  _her_ house, her home, and she  _knew_ this place, but it was  _gone_ , gone years ago. 

It shouldn't exist. 

And yet there it was, and the removals company still taking the last boxes into the house. She walked, slowly, as if this were a dream, toward it. In through the front door, past her mother, up the stairs. 

Her old room, just as she remembered it, from before that fateful journey. Bright colours like these hadn't survived the intense sun.

A suddenly loud noise tore her attention away from nostalgia. Sharp, repetitive, constant.

The ticking of the clock on the wall between the map and her old (new) desk.

 _Make this count_.

She sat heavily on untouched duvet covers, and a mattress that she hadn't slept in for a long, long time.

 _"So,_ " she remembers herself saying.  _"You think you can do something about it?"_

_"Time travel, then."_

_"Don't worry! I won't forget. Do you really think I could?"_

If this worked, if this was what she thought it was and she had travelled five years into the past... if it  _worked_ , then her friends as she had once known them were gone forever. She would never be able to meet them again, to ask if she was doing the right thing. The next time they met, they would be younger than she remembered them being, maybe kinder, maybe less kind. 

But she would do this for them. For each and every single one of them. 

She thought of Maxie, smiling at her sadly and going on the dangerous missions because the weight of the world's fate was on his shoulders, and how he no longer called himself  _great_ , and hoped that he would, maybe, listen this time - because despite herself, despite his own biased perceptions, despite everyone's thoughts on the matter, she'd grown undeniably  _fond_ of the man.

No time, though, to dwell on the past. Nothing but the present to live in now, even if the present happened to be something she'd already lived through.

_Well, May. You might as well get a move on. This is the first day of the rest of you life, isn't it?_


End file.
